No One Buys Anything Based On Facts

Think of the last thing you purchased. Was a television, car, computer, or even a book? No matter your answer, youpurchased based on emotion and so do your clients.

"No, I did research, we needed that item." you might be saying. In some cases that may be partially correct, however, most of the purchasing decisions we make are based on emotion and afterwards have to be justified.

Let's take a new cell phone as an example. You may 'need' a new phone for business and/or personal use. You probably research features or functions you desired. You canvassed friends and colleagues to see what phones they preferred. Then you set out to purchase. You head to the store and speak to one of the sales reps. They listen to your needs, like "it has to seamlessly function with my work email!" or "It needs to have hotspot connectivity". Maybe then they discuss options you haven't thought of and try to up-sell you, but eventually you will exchange your money for their merchandise.

Pretty straight forward right? Wrong. The decision was made way before that moment. You had already decided to go into the store, but that's not where it started. You had already decided you needed a new phone before heading to the store, still not the genesis of your purchasing decision. You had already been enviously looking at your friend's new phone... Here we go! Envy. That's an emotion that can compel us into action! Or maybe we were driven by the thought of how happy we would be once we bought it?

Once we emotionally connected with the idea of buying a new phone, we set about looking for 'facts' to justify the purchase. We think about things like "My old phone seems pretty slow" or "This screen is just too small to write emails on". Maybe it's a justification in another way: "I have to renew my plan anyway, it would be unintelligent to not take advantage of the discount!"

What every the 'reasons' are for the purchase, they are really justifications to support the emotional decision that you WANTED a new phone.

Emotional investment is also a powerful too to be used in helping our clients make decisions. If we can tap into their emotions we can help compel them to do business with us. Then our only job is going to be helping them list the justifications for giving us the business.

Once we tap into our customers' emotions we can make the extra effort to get people excited or enthusiastic about purchasing, then fewer justifications are needed. This is what people are talking about when they mention 'shortening the sales cycle'.

With this in mind, look to emotionally connect your products or services with your clients. Throwing functions, features, and facts at them is premature if they are not emotionally invested.